Toussaint Louverture Quotes

“great men, attributed human genius to Robeson because he”
― C.L.R. James, Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History; A Play in Three Acts

“within the context of the wider collective victory of the Haitian Revolution, so the tragedy of Toussaint Louverture paradoxically ends with an act representative of a certain vindication of Enlightenment values, one achieved by the slaves themselves. That it falls to Dessalines to lead this final struggle suggests that, as Paul B. Miller notes, "his resolve to declare Haiti independent qualifies him to a certain extent as more enlightened than Toussaint, more eager to throw off the yoke of arbitrary and tyrannical authority. Dessalines merely embodies the same paradox as Toussaint, though now inverted: emancipation achieved through barbarous autonomy rather than civilized tutelage."59”
― C.L.R. James, Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History; A Play in Three Acts

“simply, it was because the ties that bound this uneducated soldier to French civilization were of the slenderest. He saw what was under his nose so well because he saw no further. Toussaint's failure was the failure of enlightenment, not of darkness57”
― C.L.R. James, Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History; A Play in Three Acts

“confrontation of two ideas of society and they deal with it according to the innermost essence of the drama-the two societies confront one another within the mind of a single person."" James focused on the human personality of Toussaint. As Stuart Hall notes, "James imagined Toussaint as a Shakespearean figure with the tragic form built in" and "had classical Greek tragedy and Shakespeare at the very forefront of his mind at every turn."56”
― C.L.R. James, Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History; A Play in Three Acts

“Saint-Domingue through a relationship with French culture and capital.”
― C.L.R. James, Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History; A Play in Three Acts

“Robespierre have come to power after leading the defence of the revolution. In February 1794, the Convention in Paris officially abolishes slavery in all French colonies48 Though the British fleet prevented material assistance from France reaching the rebel slave army, Toussaint decides to side with the French Jacobins, taking the name "Louverture," "the opening."49 "I feel that the only European Government which will do its duty by the Negroes is the Government of the Revolution,"
Toussaint is quoted as saying, making a personal commitment by sending his two sons to be educated in Paris.”
― C.L.R. James, Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History; A Play in Three Acts

“James's play shows how the five hundred thousand enslaved blacks on the island were drawn into this conflict.”
― C.L.R. James, Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History; A Play in Three Acts

“The French Revolution is in its second year, and the new legislative assemblies in Paris are caught in a contradiction between their professed ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and the continuing obscenity of colonial slavery. Such contradictions play havoc in Saint-Domingue among the twenty thousand or so whites, as royalists fight republicans, and with the thirty thousand free mulattoes demanding full political rights. M.”
― C.L.R. James, Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History; A Play in Three Acts

“Alphonse de Lamartine had "composed a poetical drama with Toussaint as its hero," a play that was staged in Paris in 1850.”
― C.L.R. James, Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History; A Play in Three Acts